


transgalactic, 1:30 AM

by themorninglark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Exploration, Gen, Long-distance transmissions, M/M, Post-Balmera, in between episodes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 11:57:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7844011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>"Replay transmission," Shiro murmurs.</p>
  <p>By the dim light of an Arusian constellation, one that's shaped like a different kind of scar, he hears him.</p>
  <p>
    <em>"Hey, Shiro? Does this thing work?"</em>
    <br/>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
In which Keith goes, and Shiro waits, for a change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	transgalactic, 1:30 AM

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the same timeframe as the comic, when Allura's recovering from the events of the Balmera. Take this as an AU if you consider the comic canon!
> 
> I owe my title (and the inspiration for this fic) to Vienna Teng's lush, quiet ["Transcontinental, 1:30 AM"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPQe481LbQ8).

 

 

To a crackling static, so faint, so like a memory that he thinks it could be rain at the back of his mind, Shiro wakes.

 _Stirs,_ rather. He's drifted off into a fitful half-sleep sitting on the floor with one leg stretched out and the other close to his chest, arm resting on his knee, neck tilted at an awkward angle as he leans back against the side of his bunk. The last thing he remembers is taking off his helmet as the exhaustion of a hard day's training caught up with him, crept through his bones like so much moondust, seeping into his skin, a coded whisper.

He rubs his eyes now, and hears the crackle again.

There it is. It's coming from his helmet, lying just out of reach. Shiro cracks his spine to readiness, throws out an arm to pick it up and put it on. An afterburn remains, a flash of asteroid-studded red that fades into a subdued beep and a light, flashing in the corner of the HUD, before Shiro blinks and a line of text appears.

_[Last Transmission: 1:30]_

"Replay transmission," Shiro murmurs.

By the dim light of an Arusian constellation, one that's shaped like a different kind of scar, he hears him.

_"Hey, Shiro? Does this thing work?"_

Outside, a warm wind whips the gravel against the castle pathways, rising like the dry desert hurricane of Keith's voice through the familiar midnight hours. It is companionship, in its own manner. The firmament, in its infinite patience, waits; it has waited a year, and it will wait for longer.

(Just a few seconds—or ticks—

Altean time flows differently in their veins, but for them, it's always been _now_.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

_"I'm just gonna… talk. Yeah. This is kinda weird. You know I'm bad enough at talking when we're like, actually face to face, so._

_Today was boring. Pidge says we're on a planet that Coran marked as B11-593. I don't know, it's just dusty and there's no one here. Smells a bit like home, actually. Huh."_

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Coran, with a speculative twirl of his moustache, had first announced the idea in the dining hall over a mid-afternoon training break, it was Keith, the only one on his feet, who kicked a heel back against one space-white pillar, snapped himself into action first. _Typical._

"It has been, hmm, _insinuated_ to me that my star maps might be a little _out of date_."

" _Out of date?_ " Lance repeated, his eyebrows shooting up as he leaned forward, pointing an accusing finger at Coran. "In case you forgot, the _friendly planet_ you sent me and Hunk to almost killed us!"

"Oh, yeah, Shiro and I had a really hard time on our planet too. Full of strange creatures," Pidge chimed in, and exchanged a conspiratorial look and a smile with Shiro from across the table.

" _Hrmmm._ " Coran cleared his throat. "Well, I have a proposal. The princess will need a few days' more rest to recover her strength, so I thought we could use this time to do some… reconnaissance work!"

Shiro, his mouth half-open to accept the merits of Coran's suggestion, had heard the sound of a decisive footstep from behind him, heard Keith say, like it was a done deal etched in some foregone sky that bled and beckoned _crimson_ , "Yeah, okay. I'll go."

" _I_ should go," Shiro had said, whirling round.

The even keel in Keith's response cut to the quick. "Shiro, you need to stay here."

"You're my team. I'm responsible for—"

" _Everyone._ Including Allura. And the Castle? What if Zarkon attacks when she's down?"

"Keith does have a point," Coran mused.

Pidge pushed her chair back, declared, "I'm going too, then. You're gonna need my help with data collection."

"You mean, he's gonna need someone with _brains_ on this mission," Lance quipped, and Keith crossed his arms, snapped back without missing a beat, "Well, that rules _you_ out."

"Ah," Coran cut in hastily, "I think _two_ paladins is quite enough, reconnaissance teams should travel light!"

Shiro, torn between his yearning and his restlessness, the mantle of leadership and the weight of it on his shoulders, pressed his lips together and held his breath, held his tongue for a moment. _Now_ was not the time—perhaps it never would be—

Perhaps this was how it had felt, to be Keith. Watching a historic mission launch that fateful morning from a cliff's edge of reddened basalt, a vantage point miles away of _his_ choosing, for if there were some things he had to live with, he'd seize the chance to make whatever choice he _could_ , however petulant. A year and some months later, again, alone on an alien ship, watching everyone else head off to get their lions. Pacing. Waiting. He had been the first, back then, to feel the energy calling, the first to take to his heels and _fly_. Keith was made to fly.

"Coran's right," Shiro said, eventually. "Keith, buddy, you're in charge."

And Keith had smiled, a smile like embers catching one last glow before they fade, a throwaway knife's flick of a line to drive it home. "Got it."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 _He'll be fine._ Shiro doesn't doubt it for a second.

He is stronger than he knows, the Garrison orphan, their feisty, fiery troublemaker from the streets who came in with nothing but the clothes on his back and the blade at his hip, and still sleeps with it beside his pillow. More than once, Shiro's knocked lightly on his door at night and been greeted with a breath far too close to his neck, a clenched fist hidden out of sight, and then, a threadbare, tired sigh. _I thought you were—_

_What? Someone coming to get you?_

_Yeah. Old habit. Come on in._

But he hasn't done that lately, and more than anything else, it is this that tells Shiro:

_He'll be fine._

It's the truth, and pulsing beneath, another that Shiro believes; wears just to the right of his chest like a second heartbeat that bleeds in pinpricks, heals, breaks, and heals again. Like Keith himself. With every careful opening, every leaf that falls—

He is flame-red like autumn, and he is a bare branch covered with bark that's tender and rough, growing skywards; and the more he reaches out, the more he'll find a place where he belongs.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Shiro remembers the vastness of drifting.

A metronome atop his console, keeping their lonely rhythm _en route_ to Pluto, then on to Kerberos. On Earth, it had sounded breathtaking, romantic; charting and uncharting and _rewriting_ the limits of humankind itself, a lift-off to a distant horizon of crystal and ice. Ready to melt at their touch.

But that was Earth, and this is the mundane reality of deep space:

_waiting, waiting._

_It takes months for our ships to get out here._ Pidge's words, an echo of her father's, and her brother's, a matter of fact back then, when they'd loaded the mission supplies and settled in for an expedition longer than anyone had ever attempted.

 _Make yourself comfortable in the pilot's seat,_ Commander Holt had said, giving it, and then Shiro, a solid pat on the arm and a smile that bridged authoritative and sympathetic. _You'll be there for a while._

Months, flying by so quickly when he lives by the familiar, well-worn routine of the Garrison, are a different kind of eternity out here. In Shiro's moments of solitude, checking their position, listening to the Holts talk science, calibrating and re-calibrating the autopilot once more for good measure, what crosses his mind is that space is not, is never, _true black_. There are shades upon shades of subtle midnight blue and the kind of purple that lies in wait at the heart of a void, and they fold, unfold, spread across the cosmos like a hush-quiet blanket, every faintly glimmering star a beacon in this infinite dark. There are millions of them.

It is not a realisation that forms overnight. It is one that requires an intimate acquaintance with the view from his window, his little corner of space from behind the reinforced quartz glass. He sees it on the backs of his eyelids when his eyes are closed. He sees it on the backs of his hands when he looks down. Sometimes, he thinks it will never end. It is exhilarating. It is impossibly daunting. It is both at once.

Later, he thinks this thought again, standing outside the Castle of Lions at dusk.

Patience, like he'd told Keith years ago, yields focus—

(Sometimes, it's all that keeps him hanging on.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Have you heard from Keith or Pidge?" he asks in the morning, and Lance, prone on the lounge, sits up and peels something gingerly off his eyelids. They look like cucumber slices.

"Okay, hold that thought. I have a more pressing question," Shiro turns to Hunk, smiling. "Where _did_ you find cucumbers on this planet?"

Hunk slurps down the last of his packet of space Capri Sun and waves vaguely towards the village. He's frowning, a little wrinkle creasing his forehead. "I was walking, right, to visit the Arusians, and then I saw them growing on a vine just _there_ , and I got really excited because I thought I could make a cucumber salad or something, _but_ they're not _exactly_ cucumbers, they taste _kind of_ like… like tangerines? I guess? Or weird pineapples?"

"A weird pineapple salad sounds just as good," says Shiro.

Lance makes a sweeping gesture with his arm as he chucks the slices neatly into the trash. "And I, of course, being a paragon of generosity, volunteered to test this _unknown fruit_ out for Hunk."

Hunk snorts in affectionate disdain. Shiro takes a seat on Lance's other side, an eloquent eyebrow narrowed.

"Hey." Lance blinks several times. He leans in towards Shiro. "Don't you think my eyebags look _way better_ today? You should try it, Shiro. I mean, just _sayin'_ —"

"That my eyebags are terrible," Shiro continues, meeting Lance's gaze with a level stare of his own.

"That you've got a _lotta_ stress to deal with," Lance says instead.

Shiro laces his fingers together in his lap, feels the calluses of one palm rub against the cool grooves of the other, _his_ and _not his_. Gunmetal-smooth, it's not so different from the feel of a joystick or a lever in his hand, and maybe that's what this arm is, in truth; a _tool_. Whatever the Galra made of him. The phantom ache, for one moment, becomes real. Like the nightmares. He takes that in too. All of it.

Here and now, just past dawn, the sun in its garnet sky casts the disarming frankness of Lance's words in a gentler, warmer light, and Shiro lets one corner of his lips quirk upwards.

"Thanks, Lance," he says, a sincere admission. "I didn't sleep much last night."

Lance grins. "I knew it. You can _tell_ these things, you know?"

"I got a message from Keith. Around 1:30."

"Hmmph." Lance grumbles, "I bet he got _lost_ ," at the same time that Hunk asks, "Oooh, what did he say?"

"There's dust on their planet. Nothing much." Shiro shrugs lightly.

" _Dust._ That's really going to help Coran fill in his star map. Also, who sends messages at _1:30_?"

"Altean time," Shiro clarifies, with a smile.

Hunk lights up. "Hey, you wanna hear something cool?"

"From you?" Lance makes a show of humming thoughtfully, expertly. He taps a finger against his chin. "There's about a 50-50 chance that it's _actually_ cool—"

" _So_ , you know how the light from the stars that _we_ see on Arus, they'll probably take…" Hunk trails off and mutters to himself under his breath. Shiro catches some numbers, some _parsecs_ and a lot of multiplication. "Um, maybe 10,000 years to reach Earth? I mean, I don't know for sure. No one's ever measured the distance from Arus to Earth, and the light from the Eagle Nebula takes 7,000 years."

"— _aaand_ it's the wrong 50," Lance finishes, slumping down dramatically. His arms flop by his side as he pretends to snore.

Shiro nods at Hunk. "Yeah. What about it?"

"Well, it's the same with radio waves! Sound waves. Like, the comms aren't _instantaneous_? Pidge and I were running some tests on the speed of sound across different frequencies in space…"

Hunk trails off as he spreads his arms to imaginary horizons, squinting at the distance between them. Each dust speck a planet, each inch between fingertips a galaxy in miniature, and for a moment, Shiro contemplates once again how far away everything really is from each other out here. How much _more_ there is yet, for space is ever shifting, and with every supernova that explodes, every collision and sideways drift across light years, there will be new worlds and new marks to be made in another star chart, another map with its boundaries redrawn.

"So if Keith's _here_ , and we're _here_ , I'd say there'll be, like, a _1.2 second_ delay in the comms? It's not _huge_ , but, you know, it's cool, right? That what you're listening to is Keith-from-the-past."

"Huh," says Shiro.

"Or _0.9 ticks_ , if we're using Altean time," Hunk adds.

"Beats 10,000 years, I guess," Lance chimes in, in between snores.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_"I think we're in a hostile quadrant. We flew by several planets today with, like… Galra constructs crawling all over the surface. Also, we had to dodge a Galra patrol. I wanted to jump in and take it out, but Pidge said she would kill me if I interrupted her data transfer, so. Had to slow it down._

_"We're on some rock with no water anywhere. Red's kind of grumpy he didn't get to fight. I… I'm just, sort of, walking around, figuring this place out. Pidge is sleeping."_

 

 

* * *

 

 

There's a pause, then, and a faint exhale. Shiro, with his eyes closed, imagines Keith's gaze wandering off to the side, his attention caught by some sudden movement, or the glow of some red star calling to him. He hears, softer still in the background, the sharp-edged scuffle of a familiar pair of boots on an outcropping, the cool, silent desolation of another desert. There are no winds, only the sound of Keith's breathing, keeping rhythm with his footsteps. It's funny, how he always winds up in places like this. How they seem to find him.

Shiro listens to the soothing ambient noise for a while more, thinks, maybe that's the end of the message. Maybe Keith got distracted by terrain. Or unfamiliar life forms. Things seem uneventful enough, wherever they are. _Quadrant Spicolia-2._ Something like that, Coran had called it.

He's about to take off his helmet when suddenly, Keith's voice comes crackling back—

And it's _this Keith_ that catches all of Shiro's attention, _this voice_ that's cut raw and open and and cuts him, too, with the vulnerability of it. It's rough around the edges, just a little; it's the sensation of sand running through fingers, it's the little pockets of air in between and it's the sunlight and moonlight that finds their way into the cracks, shines fiercer, brighter.

 

_"…hey, Shiro. You doing okay back there?"_

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Black Lion swoops down from a gentle nosedive and comes in to land just beyond the castle grounds, Shiro's surprised to see who's walking towards him.

"Princess," he greets Allura, inclining his head. "You should be resting."

Allura, her back straight and her hair down around her shoulders, makes a dismissive sort of noise at him. The space mice scuttle up her arm. They, at least, look none the worse for wear. Shiro takes in the frustrated set to her brow, the stubborn quirk at the corners of her smile, and as he tugs off his helmet, he resigns himself to a lost cause. _Well, I tried._

"Don't _you_ start on me too. Coran's been fussing. And I _really_ need some fresh air," Allura says.

Shiro smiles back. "Fresh air can't hurt."

"That's what _I_ told him. Thank you, Shiro."

Beside them, Black Lion rumbles gently. Shiro activates the barrier around it, and goes to stand by Allura, who's stopped midway up the path. They have a clear view of the horizon from here. Allura's hands are clasped behind her back, laced tight like she's holding on to a wish, to the wind as it catches the hem of her dress, flutters through the leaves in the bushes, the woven cage of her fingers.

He follows her wistful gaze to alternate worlds, and worlds beyond. Feels their shadows grow short behind them. Here in the stark light of midday, it's harder to sit still. Even the sleek reflections that glint off the Castle of Lions seem to shine with their own kind of impatience.

"We'll be on our way soon, Princess," says Shiro, with determination.

Allura nods. "When Pidge and Keith get back. I'll be fully recovered by then. I hear from Coran they've been doing a great job out there."

Shiro's eyebrows shoot up. "Really?"

"You seem startled," Allura observes, amused.

"Not exactly. Just…" Shiro pauses, somewhat lamely; he laughs, then, a self-deprecating chuckle to fill the curious silence, and thinks back on nights past. "Yesterday, Keith said he nearly tried to take out a Galra patrol."

Allura's mouth falls open. On her shoulder, a space mouse squeaks in distress.

"By _himself_?"

" _Nearly._ Pidge stopped him."

Allura lets out a sigh that's half relief, half exasperation, and Shiro can't help thinking: _I know that sigh._

It has passed through his lips, once, twice, a _goodbye_ and a _hello_ and a _never do that again_ in equal measure, and every time he exhaled it and took a breath anew, it reshaped itself in the innermost part of his beating heart and waited to be spoken and unspoken, again and again.

And in the end, always, always—

_let's do that again._

It's a grip at his wrist, a hand on his shoulder, darkest night into blazing sunrise. It's the whistling wind through fire escapes, up, up to the roof, and the sky. In the end, it's Keith's throwing a smile his way and if Shiro's not careful, he's one swift uppercut from being decked out on the ground, one sharpened knife from coming too close, and then Keith drops it to the granite floor and the sound's like something breaking open, a fissure that erupts to bring them together, cracks and all.

_(you're bad for me.  
_ _you're the best thing that's happened to me._

_both of these things are true.)_

 

"I think," Shiro says, confident, "he would've been fine anyway. Keith... he has a way of surprising you."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 _0.9 ticks_ isn't long, not by anyone's standards. But Shiro knows, and he knows, too, that _Keith_ knows—

(well, it's an occupational hazard—)

In the _1.2 seconds_ that divides them, growing, with every burst of speed that Keith puts on, to _1.225_ , _1.23_ , anything can happen, and Shiro finds an explosion of possibilities. A split second's more than enough time for a meteor to veer off course, for a laser to take a deflection, for the flicker of a memory to cross a distant mind, flare and fade again.

In between lines of static, Shiro waits.

He does not think about it, the what-ifs that could spring forth from an overactive imagination. That, too, is part of training, and what makes a _great_ fighter pilot stand out from the _competent_. Learning to shut out the little voice in your head. Trusting your instincts.

They carry their past, a comet's fiery trail leaving its heat in the corners of their words and gestures; they carry their future, a nebulous hope that Shiro finally dares to look up and _see_. For there are views that he knows, of the loneliness of space and a Galra prison cell with walls that seem to close in with every knuckle-mark he leaves on the floor, every scratch he makes with a torn fingernail, and there were views he only dreamed of in fitful starts, that would disappear by morning. No longer. _No longer._

 

_"We're done with the section Coran wanted us to map out, I think. We're on our way back. Good to hear Allura's better. Well… see you soon, I guess. Yeah. See you."_

_[Transmission ended: 1:30]_

 

 

* * *

 

 

And there is no instrument of time in all the galaxies, no unit grand or intimate enough, to capture their _now_. What there _is_ is a ragged whisper, cupped in Shiro's palm when he wakes from another nightmare that escapes like a ghost in the dark.

_"Hey, Shiro. I'm here."_

Seared across the breadth of him, another uneven scar, one that he remembers the touch of.

 

 


End file.
